Danube power plant Freudenau Vienna

In 1987, the City of Vienna and the Austrian Donaukraftwerke AG announced an interdisciplinary competition "Opportunities for the Danube Region".

From the experience of the Danube Island planning, a team of architects, engineers and landscape architects was already required when the competition was announced.

Among more than 100 competitors, Team 3c emerged as the clear winner:
Albert Wimmer, architect, Vienna, Herwig Schwarz, civil engineer, St. Pölten, and Gottfried and Anton Hansjakob, landscape architects, Munich.

The planning provided a number of functional and design impulses for the future urban design and development in the reservoir area.
In contrast to conventional power plants, a power plant was built that could be viewed and walked on by the Viennese population.

The main concern of the planners was to integrate the power plant into the landscape between Prater, Lobau and Donauinsel with a near-natural environment:

A foot and bicycle bridge, which stretches from bank to bank over the entire power plant connects the cycle path networks on the right and left of the Danube.

Large sections of the Danube banks that were previously hard-surfaced were loosened up by the redesign and made more permeable to water-loving organisms in exchange for tributary and old water.

The so-called bypass stream is designed with typical elements of side waters of the Danube flow close to nature and allows unhindered fish migration.
Special emphasis was placed on the creation of a bypass stream that allows fish and invertebrates to migrate around the weir in both directions in the peripheral zone of the Danube island.

The planting was done with the site-typical woody plants.

The Freudenau power plant supplies environmentally friendly energy from the Danube, which meets the needs of almost half of Vienna's households.